There are numerous reasons former President William Jefferson Clinton was a smart politician. One of the primary if basic reasons was his prodigious mind and elite education. Clinton attended Georgetown University, Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, and graduated from Yale Law School (Shapiro, 1992). ClintonÆs baby-boomer status also made him a savvy politician, because he had his finger on the pulse of the nationÆs most populous age category, those born in the baby-boom era. Clinton was a smart politician for a number of others reasons, including his ability to view intelligent women as equal players and an asset as well as his understanding of the importance of cultural icons. However, if Clinton was a smart politician for any reason above all others, it was his ability to swing both parties toward the middle-ground on a number of formerly bipartisan issues.
There are a variety of reasons why Bill Clinton is considered a smart politician. Chief among these was his ability to nudge his formerly liberal democratic party more toward a centrist perspective, forcing Republican moderates to move toward the center also. As Political Scientist James Thurber argues, Clinton ôcleared away the leftist excesses of the 70sàgoing for the middle is just smart politicsö (Kiefer, 1999, 1). Regardless of what issue it was, including even controversial ones like gays in the military, Clinton persuaded his party and its leadership to follow him to middle-ground. This helped him win on many policy issues while bringing bipartisan cooperation to politics. Kiefer (1999) maintains that Clinton adopted a more ôcentrist ethosàin doing so, heÆs helped to unite Democrats, rob Republicans of key issues, usher in a new era of budget surpluses, and inspire other world leaders to follow his æthird wayÆö (1).
Despite this centrist foundation that made Clinton a smart politician, there are a number of others reasons why
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